My name is (the dude) and I am a Duke undergrad and co-founder of anotherwebsitedotcom. I have come to admire the effectiveness of AppSumo’s marketing campaigns and would love to ask you for some advice on the subject.

Do you think you might have time for a call sometime this week?

Thanks in advance,
(the dude)

Do I know him? Have I slept with him? Is he my brother? No, on most accounts 🙂

I’m not trying to be harsh to just this guy, I still make this mistake. Here’s an email I sent to my good friend Ramit recently asking for an intro to a book agent:

On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 2:56 PM, Noah Kagan wrote:

Can you pass along or intro me to your agent please?

Good luck on the launch!

Noah

Luckily, Ramit is a good friend and told me to go F myself and send a better email.

Think about it. Ramit has to stop what he’s doing, think about what to write and then write out a worthy introduction. Why am I not making this a no brainer for him?!? There’s a similar lesson to be learned about two girls I dated. One was told me to change the way I dressed, the other convinced me to change by making it easy.

Here’s what I sent back to him:

Hey McAgent,

I wanted to introduce you to Noah Kagan. He’s a friend and got some serious interest from Wiley on a book. He’s not only a great writer, as you may have already seen, but his approach to building/marketing businesses is completely disruptive (Facebook, Mint, AppSumo)

When you ask selfishly, the other person responds selfishly (or not at all).

I can tell you its that much easier for the other person to help when they see you’ve made a solid investment already — handwriting the note, writing a better email, researching, or just doing their work for them.